Interesting. Sounds good, but there is a lot that is not explained in
that summary, so I hope you don't mind if I ask a few questions.
> 40 + treatment free hives, sc, foundationless, 1 1/4" frame widths.
Is this 40+ producing hives?
--- No, 30 + Hives are new this year captures.
What exactly do you mean by sc, especially if the hives are foundation-less?
---- Our local ferals are small and generally draw out brood foundation in the 4.7 - 5.0 mm range. When I catch a new swarm that I don't know the source colony, I use bee size to help determine if they are from a feral source. I sell all the swarms I catch that I think are not from feral sources. So even though I'm foundationless, I'm making sure to keep small bees from feral sources.
> Avg. honey production was a little over 80 lbs a hive, which was good
That is over the entire 40+ hives? i.e. 3,200+ lbs?
---- No, I'm a second year beekeeper, that is the average of the 12 hives I over wintered last year. Not harvesting any honey from new this years colonies, although I probably could have from a dozen or so. Had to robinhood about a dozen supers around to make sure some of my later swarm captures and removals have enough for this winter.
> September 24/48 hour natural fall mite counts averaged 3 - 5
> mites. No hives were over 10. Did sugar rolls counts on 8 big
> two year old hives to double check and mite counts were all
> less that 3%.
Appreciate the numbers. A lot of people don't know what they are doing.
Seems you do.
---- I'm very impressed with the Randy Oliver's work about the population curve of varroa mites and how to know when your varroa population is to high. I don't want to wait 3 years to know if my hives are going to eventually crash to varroa. Also, when I see I have a hive with mite issues, I force them to requeen themselves, giving them a brood break.
Was that early or late September? How much brood was in the hives at
that point in time? When is you first real frost?
--- Mid-september - 90% of the hives were in good shape with lots of brood. Had about a dozen that I combined that were weeker or recovering from late summer supercedures. First real frost should be in about 3 weeks.
> Manage them like they would live in the wild, no feeding, no swarm
controll, no splitting.
But supering and honey harvesting happens, I assume?
---- Yes, I super. And next year I will be opening up brood nest and/or reversing some boxes for some swarm control. Our early swarm season proceeds our main flow by about 6 weeks and I don't think production was hurt that much by swarming, althought it sure kept me busy catching my own swarms ;).
What is the annual mortality?
--- About 25%. I lost 2 out of 14 hives last winter and 2 out of 6 nucs. The nucs died of starvation, 1 large colony succumed to varroa, 1 had a late supercedure that didn't take and I missed knowing it was queenless. This year I've lost a few late cutouts and a half dozen or so late afterswarms, no large colonies.
> started with all local feral survivor stock that I've caught.
40+ is a lot of hives to have just caught in a non-AFB location.
--- We have a thriving local feral population. I did 16 cut outs and caught about 30 swarms this year. If I didn't have a full time job, I could have probably doubled that.
That sounds like a lot of work. How long have you been at this?
2nd year beekeeper, still have gobs to learn. I've tried to follow Michael / Dee's plan as close as I can because I don't know what I'm doing well enough to change anything.
Don
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